Fossil lobster from Motunau

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32679, 7 August 1971, Page 12

Fossil lobster from Motunau

Motunau Beach on the North Canterbury coast has an understandable reputation as a place where important fossils are found. In the last few years these have included three different species of penguin, a huge flying bird with teeth, and a new sort of crab.

Each of these extinct animals, about five million years old, is unique to Motunau and has as yet been found nowhere else. Another exciting find was made in 1966 when Mr and Mrs William Elliot, of Motunau, found the 3in long body of a lobster in a boulder on the beach. The Elliots brought the fossil to the Canterbury Museum where it was realised that it was likely to be something quite new to science.

The fossil lobster was sent to a world authority on such fossils, Professor Martin

(Confrbuted by the Canterbury Museum)

Glaessner, of the University of Adelaide, who arranged for it to be studied by a member of his staff, Mr R. J. F. Jenkins. Mr Jenkins has now completed his detailed study of the original specimen of the Motunau loster, together with six further specimens subsequently found by Mrs J. R. Taggart, Miss H. D. Adams, and Messrs L. E. Tregoning, S. A. Chidgey, and J. Cairney.

Previously unknown

An account of the lobster will be published later this year in the Dutch scientific journal “Crustaceana” and will include a revision of the classification of related living lobsters. Mr Jenkins has confirmed that the fossil is a previously unknown lobster and is placing it in a new genus. The specimens studied by him are now safely back in the Canterbury Museum. The closest modem relative of the Motunau fossil live in Indonesia and Japan. A less closely related lobster called Nephrops challenger! was dredged from deep water

off New Zealand by the oceanographic research ship H.M.S. Challenger m 1874. European relatives include the Norwegian lobster, Dublin Bay prawn, or scampi. | Important finds Enthusiastic amateur collectors of fossils have made important finds at Motunau Beach. By generously depositing their specimens at the museum they have ensured that their fossils are available for study. The study of fossils, or palaeontology tells us what like was like millions of years ago and provides clues to the ancestry, classification, and present distribution' of modem animals.

Every fossil found has the potential of being new to science. Even if not the first record of a new kind of animal, it may be the best specimen yet known, or one that shows previously unknown details. Finding a wellpreserved fossil can be an exciting experience, especially if the discovery should prove an important contribution, to the science of palaeontology.—D.R.G.